Governing the Future: AI Policy and the Road Ahead ft. Kevin Scott (Microsoft Chief Technology Officer)

The Institute of Politics invites you to an afternoon conversation with Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, on the AI policy and regulatory challenges ahead in the months and years to come. Drawing on his background growing up in rural central Virginia and his deep engagement with questions of equity and access, Scott will explore how thoughtful AI governance can expand opportunity rather than deepen existing divides.

The discussion will examine the role of government, industry, and civil society in shaping responsible AI policy—and what’s at stake for communities that have historically been underserved by emerging technologies.

Please register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person.

About Kevin Scott

Kevin Scott is Microsoft’s chief technology officer. He is an innovative leader driving the technical vision to achieve Microsoft’s mission, and is passionate about creating technologies that benefit everyone. He focuses on helping make the company an exceptional place for engineers, developers and researchers to work and learn. Scott’s 20-year career in technology spans both academia and industry as researcher, engineer and leader.

Prior to joining Microsoft, he was senior vice president of engineering and operations at LinkedIn, where he helped build the technology and engineering teams and led the company through an IPO and six years of rapid growth.

Earlier in his career, he oversaw mobile ads engineering at Google, including the integration of Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob. At AdMob, Scott was responsible for engineering and operations for the world’s leading platform for mobile monetization. Before joining AdMob, Scott held numerous leadership positions at Google in search and ads engineering and helped with the company’s early efforts establishing remote engineering centers.

Scott is the host of the podcast Behind the Tech, which features interviews with technology heroes who have helped create the tech industry of today. He also authored the book “Reprogramming the American Dream,” which explores how artificial intelligence can be realistically used to serve the interests of everyone, not just the privileged few.

As co-inventor on several patents around search and information extraction, he has also authored several publications on dynamic binary rewriting that collectively have been cited hundreds of times in other scholarly research.

He has received a Google Founder’s Award, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship and an ACM Recognition of Service Award.

He is a member of the board of directors of Shopify, an adviser to several Silicon Valley startups, an active angel investor, the founder of the non-profit organization Behind the Tech, an emeritus of the Anita Borg Institute’s board of trustees and a trustee of The Scott Foundation. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Harvard’s Technology for Public Purpose (TAPP) program.

Scott holds an M.S. in computer science from Wake Forest University, a B.S. in computer science from Lynchburg College, and has completed most of his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Virginia.